Omega Force 3: The Enemy Within (25 page)

“
Good job, Captain
,” Twingo’s voice came over the intercom. “
Go ahead and lower the ramp and we can get started
.”

With the
Phoenix
inside the hull of the
Diligent,
Twingo was now able to move back and forth between the two with ease. Jason also made his way down to the cargo bay to see how the plan was shaping up. He stood up on the mezzanine as the engineer, with Lucky’s help, dragged heavy power cables from an open hatch in the floor of the frigate and began connecting them to one of the gunship’s main bus couplers. There were thirty-two cables in total that snaked into the cargo bay once they were done.

“You think it will still work?” Jason asked as Twingo removed his helmet to take a break before heading back down into the bowels of the
Diligent’s
engineering deck.

“I won’t know until we boot up the computers,” Twingo admitted. “We’re hooked in properly, so the
Phoenix
should be able to power up all the subsystems and we can at least get an idea as to how much is damaged from the attack and what has gone to hell from sitting in vacuum. In the spirit of full-disclosure ... I’ve never actually done this before.”

“Welcome to my world,” Jason said. “Half the shit I do anymore is the first time I’ve ever done it.”

“Good point.”

It was another hour before Twingo felt comfortable trying to bring certain systems on the
Diligent
to life. He had Kage down in the engineering bay of the
Phoenix
monitoring the main reactor’s output as he demanded more and more power from the core to get the dead ship’s subsystems back on.

“How is it going?”

“The same as when you asked ten minutes ago, Captain,” Kage said, not taking his eyes from the terminal he was sitting at. “I’ll let you know if something is going wrong, but honestly the core overloading will likely just kill us all instantly.”

“That’s something, I suppose,” Jason said. Finally unable to sit idle anymore, he grabbed his EVA suit and went to the armory where he could have some room to change. Getting into the pressure layer was a bit undignified and usually required some room to swing one’s limbs about wildly to actually get it in the correct position.

After getting on the tough, outer shell and the powerpack, Jason walked out into the cargo bay before slipping the helmet on and doing a pressure check. Once it was secured and showed a green indicator, he stepped through the shield and onto the ramp, which was barely passable thanks to all the cables that hovered near the surface.

“Burke leaving the ship,” he said over the com as he gritted his teeth against the uncomfortable freefall feeling of micro-gravity and followed the cables to the open hatch in the floor of the hangar deck that led down to the engineering areas. He stepped off the edge and, propelling himself with his hands, he floated downwards at a steady clip, passing by six other decks before his feet hit the floor. He magnetized his boots and walked off to find Twingo.

He was amazed to see that many terminals in the engineering space were lit up and displaying data—albeit most of that data was coupled with strident warnings and errors—and even some of the ambient lighting was up. He found Twingo at one of the terminals near the aft section, furiously entering commands.

“
This is an incredible pain in the ass to do with pressure gloves on
,” Twingo said when he saw Jason approach. “
I’ll
still have it ready in time, though
.”

“I’m not here to hustle you,” Jason assured him. “You just tell me what you need. I was just going a little stir-crazy sitting on the ship and not doing much of anything.”

“
I can understand that
,” Twingo said. “
My best guess is that I’ll have emergency power up in the next couple of hours, then field containment, then I can begin to try and start the anti-matter generators. They left this thing completely fueled, if you can believe that. It lost a little once power was lost, but more than enough for our purposes
.”

“That’s good to hear,” Jason agreed. “So once the anti-matter flow is back up do you think the core will restart easily?”

“
Short answer? Yes
,” Twingo said confidently. “
Kellea’s engineer ran a tight ship and everything is in good order. He even left detailed instructions for a cold start in hard copy in case of something like this. A man after my own heart ... I hope he made it to an escape pod
.”

“Me too,” Jason agreed before walking off to look over the rest of the engineering area. Everywhere he looked, power cables from the
Phoenix
were snaked into a panel and breathing life into the derelict. Thankfully the frigate was a robustly-designed ship and a lot of the critical systems had their own processing and control subsystems. Twingo had found early on that the main computer core had been cut out of its mounts and removed. Likely looking for the data Crisstof had kept in his safe.

The lack of a main computer did pose some challenges, however. With nothing acting as the “gate keeper” for all the individual ship systems, it was a labor-intensive effort to get everything working together. Toss in the added challenge of the ship being cold and adrift for so long and he didn’t envy Twingo in his task. But it was his plan, so Jason intended to let him either
make it work or throw in the towel himself.

Eventually, with nothing useful to contribute, Jason made his way back to the vertical shaft, demagnetized his boots, and pushed off to float along towards the hangar deck.

*****

“The core is running, the engines are primed for a fast start, but we’ve run into a huge snag without the main computer being there anymore,” an exhausted Twingo was relaying the bad news to the rest of the crew over the galley table. The engineer’s eyes were drooping and he was still in his EVA suit, sans helmet. He hadn’t even removed the gloves as he sipped at a mug of chroot.

“So there’s no way to get her moving again?” Doc asked.

“Oh, that’s the easy part,” Twingo said. “It’s the fact that we can’t steer the ship remotely that is the main problem. So this plan will work, but it’s a one-way trip for someone.
Any volunteers?”

“How long until Steader is scheduled to show up?”
Jason asked.

“Two days,” Kage answered.

“Then I want everyone to stand down for at least eight hours. That means actually getting some sleep and approaching this problem fresh later. We’re all falling out and Twingo looks like he may have actually already died,” Jason said, getting up. “Computer, I want a general ship-wide wakeup call given in exactly eight and a half hours from now.”

“Acknowledged.”

“Lucky, can you stand watch while we’re down?”

“Of course, Captain,” Lucky answered and walked off towards the stairs that would take him up to the command deck. Jason made sure Twingo actually went to his quarters before trudging off to his own stateroom to grab a few hours.

Predictably, he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, knowing that sleep would be elusive. He was concerned that a cornerstone of their plan wasn’t going to be possible to execute. He was sick with worry about what was happening to Kellea. He was also not entirely comfortable with his ship trapped inside the
Diligent’s
hangar if someone happened upon them and decided to investigate.

He began to compartmentalize the problems, arrange them in order, and work on the most pressing and easily solvable first. The
Phoenix’s
passive array was next to useless inside the hangar, and switching to active sensors would only announce their presence to the entire system and leave them no safer. They could play the odds and just hope that nobody happened nearby, but this was the type of thinking that led to people dying. Idly, he wondered if one of the twins would be able to just perch up near the entrance and keep an eye out for them.

The moment he thought of his two little semi-smart drones tucked away in their cradles he bolted upright in his bed. “I wonder,” he said aloud before swinging his legs over the side of the bed and heading for the door. “It’s not like I was going to get any sleep anyway.”

“Is something wrong, Captain?” Lucky asked as Jason came onto the bridge.

“Nothing you’re not already aware of,” he answered. “How familiar are you with the twins and their capabilities?” Lucky actually managed to look taken aback by the question.

“I am familiar with their operational specifications—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Jason waved him off. “I know all of that too. I’m wondering if we could teach one how to fly a ship.” The battlesynth seemed to mull the question over a moment.

“It would be an intriguing answer to our problem,” Lucky agreed. “May I ask what led you to think of the autonomous drones as a solution?”

“Sometimes inspiration just comes to me,” Jason said, moving to one of the terminals on the port side of the bridge. “In a completely unrelated matter, we need to launch one of the twins to run overwatch on the hangar opening.”

Kellea sat in a chair on the bridge of the carrier
Stalwart
, one of Crisstof’s larger ships that was mostly used for relief work. Steader had tried his very best to turn her into a ship of war, packing the hangars with any type of combat ship he could find while haphazardly installing weapon emplacements around the hull. These were controlled by no fewer than six computers that weren’t networked together. She was actually mildly curious if a point defense turret would try to shoot down one of their own missiles when it was fired.

The bruises on her face were nearly healed up, but her wrists were a raw, ravaged mess after repeatedly being put into restraints only to be dragged up to the bridge and deposited in a chair to be nothing more than a captive audience to Steader’s increasingly bizarre rants. After her talks with Agent Alux, it was obvious the ConFed had enlisted Steader in order to get their hands on Crisstof’s fleet, one of the largest privately-owned armadas in known space. He was highly expendable, especially now as they neared the endgame, and she suspected he was beginning to realize it.

As they neared their destination (they had not told her where they were going), she could see that Agent Alux had gone from being merely irritated at Steader to looking mildly concerned for the man’s stability. He wouldn’t assume full control of Crisstof’s assets until after the trial. Though it might be rigged from the start, the cogs of a massive bureaucracy guaranteed that it would still be many months before the trial even began.

Agent Alux had questioned her extensively about Omega Force, but she had pled ignorance at every opportunity and emphasized that Crisstof had worked with many outside contractors. She made it clear that she had a low opinion of such characters and had little to no direct interaction with them. It was a convincing lie since it was mostly true. Given the accuracy of a lot of his information, she assumed they’d secured the computer core from the
Diligent
, but she also knew Chrisstof had been very careful never to mention Omega Force by name even for the purpose of internal documentation, so even if they looked into every single file they’d never find that particular name.

Even without her help, however, Alux had a sizeable amount of data on operations Omega Force had taken part in. But a lot of it was inaccurate. As with all legends, the boys in Omega were credited with far more than they’d actually done. While Jason would likely get a kick out of that, Kellea could understand the danger that presented. They were losing their
anonymity, at least within the ConFed’s intel and special operations circles, the very places you really didn’t want to be well known. She hoped she would have the chance to warn Jason about this, but she didn’t really expect to survive much longer. From what she was able to garner, they were taking on a full load of biodrones and dispersing them for another round of mayhem on as many as twelve planets. She didn’t believe she would be given free passage for the entire delivery route.

“What are you thinking about?” Steader demanded, looking at her intently from the captain’s seat. The actual captain of the ship was standing uncomfortably off to the side, monitoring his crew as they flew the ship. Kellea knew the man, and he knew her. He had refused to meet her gaze when she was first hauled up to the bridge.

“I won’t ask you again,” Steader said, his voice rising just a tick.

“Leave her alone, Mr. Dalton,” Agent Alux said in a bored voice from the back of the bridge. “She’s here as an information source. She’s not here to amuse you.” Steader looked like he was going to respond, saw the bridge crew watching the exchange, and let it drop. He pasted on his best politician’s smile before addressing the agent.

“Of course, Alux,” he said, deliberately leaving his title off. “I’ve known her well, for a long time, however, and I’d prefer not to have her sitting there plotting.”

“Really?”
Alux said, setting his tablet down and staring down Steader. “Because she tells me that you’ve only briefly met fewer than six times,” he said, holding up a six-fingered hand. “So how is it you know her well?”

“It’s a figure of speech,” Steader replied, his eyes flashing in anger even as the same ridiculous smile stayed pasted on his face. “She’s been my First Father’s right hand for years now. She’s not to be trusted.”

“And yet you keep insisting that she be up here on the bridge,” Alux retorted. “Try to remain calm, Steader. Soon it won’t matter what she does, or doesn’t do.” Steader gave Kellea a look that she was certain was meant as a warning.
The stupid shit doesn’t even realize Alux just threatened him, not me.
The exchange did present a problem, however. If Dalton was no longer necessary she had no delusions about being kept around after he was eliminated.

“Meshing-in now,” the captain reported wearily. A slight shudder ran through the ship as the slip-space fields collapsed, and the front window cleared to show they had entered a system with a single primary star. Despite being kept in the dark, Kellea knew exactly where they were: RU933.

“Scan the system,” Alux ordered, getting up out of his seat.

“The system is clear,” the sensor operator declared after a moment. “There are a few negligible navigation hazards from the incident that destroyed a ship in one of the holding formations, but nothing that should impede our rendezvous.”

“Very good,” Alux said. “Captain, alert my counterpart we’ve arrived and are moving to match orbits with them.”

“Of course, sir,” the captain said.

*****

“I think this may actually work,” Twingo said as he watched Kage furiously programming “Number Two”, one of the
Phoenix’s
autonomous drones, in an attempt to get it ready to take control of the heavily damaged
Diligent
.

“You had doubts?” Jason asked.

“A few,” Twingo admitted. “Lots of ideas sound good on the surface, and then later become obvious that they simply won’t work.” He and Jason had tried to program the drone themselves by telling it what they wanted via voice commands, then manual inputs, but the poor bot just couldn’t understand what they wanted it to do. In the end they hauled Kage down and linked him directly into the drone’s CPU and had him re-coding many of the subroutines in order for the plan to work.

“How are we with the rest of the preparations?”

“The core is back up and stabilized,” Twingo reported. “I could only get four of the six engines to respond, but the fact the outboard engines are inoperable may help suppress the signature somewhat. Engines two through five are pre-heated and primed for an instantaneous, emergency start.”

“Will they take it?” Jason asked.

“For a short bit,” Twingo said. “More than enough for this to either work or fail.”

“Your optimism is overwhelming,” Jason said, still watching Kage while standing in the
Phoenix
’s cargo hold with his helmet off. “While we’re standing around doing nothing, grab Lucky and let’s go help ourselves to whatever’s left in the
Diligent
’s magazines. Between Kellea’s rescue and taking down this detection grid, we’re down to seven missiles on board.”

Twenty minutes later Jason and Twingo were watching as Lucky forced his way into the frigate’s magazine. With a final rending of tortured metal, a strange thing to witness in the silence of a complete vacuum, they walked in and played their lights over rows of missiles, bombs, and other munitions. “I wish I could adopt them all,” Jason said with a laugh. “Let’s figure out which are the most expensive and take those.”

Twingo walked over to the panel by the door, which had a single, red pinpoint of light in the lower left corner, and tapped it twice. The panel then fully illuminated and allowed him to bring up the lights and powered up the lifts needed to move the missiles around. “Back up bus power is available ship-wide,” he explained. “I’ve left everything powered down to keep the ship dark and cold, but I’d rather not have Lucky ripping the mounts off of missiles with live warheads.”

“Good thinking,” Jason agreed, now moving along the racks and reading the displays that were coming up. The
Phoenix
could hold thirty-two missiles between her forward and aft weapons bays in her belly. She could also hold another five in each wing that were fired through launching tubes close to the main guns when it was inadvisable to risk opening the weapon bay doors and exposing it to incoming fire. The wing stores were more torpedo than missile, smaller and far less sophisticated.

“Let’s be smart about this,” Twingo said. “The more diverse our load-out, the better off we’ll be. What do we have left on board in the aft weapons bay?”

“Four low-yield fusion and three high-explosive penetrators,” Jason answered.

“So nothing really worth keeping compared to what’s in here,” Twingo confirmed to himself. “We have some time. Let’s grab a full load of thirty-two and replace the seven we have left right now. I’m sure Crisstof won’t mind.”

“After what we’re about to do to his ship, swiping a few missiles will be the least of his problems,” Jason laughed. “By the way ... since this is your idea, I feel it’s only right you explain it to him.”

“If it works,” Twingo said, making a face.

“If it works,” Jason confirmed.

Over the next two hours, the conversation was reduced to single words and grunts as they worked to load up the missiles on dollies to move them up to the hangar deck and begin loading them onto the
Phoenix
. This first step nearly met with disaster when Twingo, in a momentary lapse of reason, powered on the hover-dolly and it, with him still attached, went rocketing to the ceiling since artificial gravity was still disabled. The damage was minimal, at least physically, as Jason (and even Lucky) made many jokes at his expense over the next half hour.

The micro-gravity did make short work of actually moving the munitions around once they were secured and detached from the storage racks, so once the trio began dragging the missiles up the long, wide access tunnel that led to the hangar, the job went much more quickly. The
Phoenix
, being a vessel designed from the ground up for combat operations, was relatively easy to load up. First they opened the forward weapons bay and commanded the internal racks be lowered to the ground. The rack unlocked with a heavy
clunk
and easily slid down on six telescopic guides.

The missiles were quickly loaded up onto the launching arms and the inductive connectors of the umbilicals were attached. It took a few minutes for the
Phoenix
to negotiate with the new missiles, after which the status lights on all of the individual pylons winked green, letting Jason know the gunship had connected to each smart weapon and that it was now fully functional and available.

They secured the forward bay and then went to work on the aft bay, lowering the launch rack and going about removing the seven missiles already there. Three of the missiles actually had an amber status light, meaning their health was questionable, and looked to be about ten years out of date.

“I’ll bet these were part of the original load-out when this ship was first deployed and patrolling space for that mining company,” Twingo said, gingerly disconnecting the hard lines from the weapons.

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Jason said. “We always fire and reload from the forward bay. They’ve been here as long as I’ve had the ship, I know that. I wonder why the Eshquarians didn’t replace them when they rebuilt her.”

“I think they were more than a little miffed that you actually decided to rebuild an aging gunship than accept the gift of a brand new ship out of their shipyards,” Twingo laughed.

“No doubt about that,” Jason said. “I still think that if the premier had known what my choice would be they’d have just scrapped her while we were all still laid up in the hospital.”

“Lucky us,” Twingo said.

“Excuse me?” Lucky asked in confusion.

“Huh? Oh, no,” Twingo answered. “I meant fortunate us.”

“Oh.”

The three quickly unloaded the missiles, secured them on of the now-empty transport dollies, and put the new weapons in the rack. Jason dragged the dolly with their discarded weapons into the forward part of the hangar and engaged the mag-lock, securing it to the deck. He paused to look around. The ConFed had not only left the weapons and fuel aboard the ship, the hangar was littered with various expensive ships. He briefly toyed with the idea of trying to save them, but decided it was an unneeded complication on top of an already overly-complicated plan.

“How is it coming?” Jason asked Kage as he approached.

“I’m actually finished,” Kage answered. “I’m just running it through some simulations to make sure there aren’t any surprises. This thing isn’t as dumb as we originally thought, it just takes a very specific syntax.”

“That’s good to know,” Jason said. “This will be our one and only diversion. Otherwise, they’ll see us coming half an orbit away.”

“It’ll do the job,” Kage said confidently. “Assuming Twingo is able to get the ship moving at all, of course.”

“He says everything is ready,” Jason said. “Anyway, press on. Just make sure you’re disconnected and it’s ready to do its thing within the next two hours.”